The dust of an angry afternoon is calmed by the gentleness of the twilight. The soft intoxicating smell of incense wafts across the air and tired minds, trapped in aching bodies, settled down for religious discourses.
But for Saraswati Basu of Bhubaneswar. there is no peace. Her mind is disturbed, there is turmoil in her heart and her eyes stare into the dimming horizon.
For her, the Kumbh Mela has never been an occasion to celebrate. Every year, since 1990, she has travelled to Allahabad for the Magh Mela and the Kumbh, looking for her only son Vishwajot, who went missing at the 1989 Kumbh Mela and has never returned.
Vishwajot, who was then around 31, went for a swim in the Yamuna and never returned. All efforts to trace him or his body were futile.
“Everyone tells me he died during the swim but I never saw his body. He may have lost his memory or sustained some serious injury... maybe he got paralysed. Just because police records say he is missing, do I just give up on my son?” she asks.
But wouldn’t her son have returned by now if he were alive?
“How could he? My husband was in the Army and we kept getting transferred, moving from one city to another. Even if Vishwajot wanted, how could he find us?” she reasons. Saraswati lost her husband in 1997 but hope for her son lives on.